Program that tells you your offset from UT?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Art
  • Start date Start date
A

Art

I've been investigating alternate programming methods in connection
with a program that displays all recently modified files on a drive
(or recently created or recently accessed). Since I wanted to use
the Universal Time recorded by the file system, it became necessary
to find a way to determine the local offset from UT ... which I did.
But in the process I wasn't able to find any simple utilities that
supply the user with just that offset information. Am I missing
something? Would such a simple utility be useful to some people?
If so, and there's no freeware util available, I'd be happy to put
one up at my web site. Or maybe there are web sites that use
some technique to find a visitor's actual offset (not what it should
be but what it actually is on his/her machine).

Art
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
Would such a simple utility be useful to some people?
Click to expand...

How do you find local time? Or are you talking about finding the
offset the user put into the computer, which means that he already
knows the offset?
 
How do you find local time? Or are you talking about finding the
offset the user put into the computer, which means that he already
knows the offset?
Click to expand...

You mean _should_ or _might_ know the offset :) I'm not sure that
the offset value in hours ... and the fact that it varies if you've
opted to have Windows auto-adjust for daylight savings time ....
is something that most users are _fully_ aware of. So I had in
mind a very simple util that would simply display the offset, if any,
in hours from UT that is set by Windows. Not that I think there's
much use for that information, but newbies especially might fnd
the info interesting and educational. The util could also display
some links to web sites which have detailed info, maps, etc.

Personally, I found the Wikopedia information on how the time
is generated in 100 nsec intervals from the start of the year 1601
to be quite interesting.

Art
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
You mean _should_ or _might_ know the offset :) I'm not sure that
the offset value in hours ... and the fact that it varies if you've
opted to have Windows auto-adjust for daylight savings time ....
is something that most users are _fully_ aware of.
Click to expand...

Double-click on the clock in the tray. Click on Time Zone. The
offset and whether Windows will adjust for DST is right there. It's
simple and the information is already available without any additional
programming.
 
Double-click on the clock in the tray. Click on Time Zone. The
offset and whether Windows will adjust for DST is right there. It's
simple and the information is already available without any additional
programming.
Click to expand...

Ir doesn't display the actual offset when daylight savings time is
involved. For example, I'm in the Eastern time zone here in the U.S.
and it shows GMT -0500. However, my current offset is actually
- 4 hours because of DST. I don't see any way to get it to show
the actual offset.

Art
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
Ir doesn't display the actual offset when daylight savings time is
involved. For example, I'm in the Eastern time zone here in the U.S.
and it shows GMT -0500. However, my current offset is actually
- 4 hours because of DST. I don't see any way to get it to show
the actual offset.
Click to expand...

Is it really that difficult for some people to subtract 1 from a
number that's never larger than 12?

You can't programmatically determine whether DST is in effect, because
different countries use different dates so, if the user has to put in
the dates, it's probably more difficult than just knowing that it's
in, or not in, effect - which most people tend to be aware of.
 
Is it really that difficult for some people to subtract 1 from a
number that's never larger than 12?
Click to expand...

Aw c'mon. Do you really believe that most people would have a
clue about whether to add 1 or subtract 1?
You can't programmatically determine whether DST is in effect, because
different countries use different dates so, if the user has to put in
the dates, it's probably more difficult than just knowing that it's
in, or not in, effect - which most people tend to be aware of.
Click to expand...

You most certainly can programmatically determine the actual
offset on a machine, and that information might be of interest
to some users.

Anyway, I've included that little feature in a new program I
just put up at my web site named RECENT-F.

Art
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
<snip>

If you like classical music, this website has worldwide internet links to
classical music radio stations. The listings include time zone information
as minus or plus values from GMT/UTC. (Note: The website is in Dutch but
this is not a problem as most information is shown graphically)

http://www.nieuwsbronnen.com/klassiekemuziekradios/

===

Frank Bohan
¶ When you come to the end of your rope, make a knot and hang on it.
 
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